As the U.S. awoke yesterday and began a fresh week the cryptocurrency market experienced a minor slump that saw the majority of major coins drop by around 8%.
Bitcoin (BTC), Ripple (XRP) and Stellar Lumens (XLM) revealed the strongest resistance though, each suffering only a 3% dip or less. Ethereum (ETH) and EOS were the worst hit, each losing almost 9% over the past 24 hours.
XRP is performing the best with only a 1.8% drop, most likely buoyed up by the news of the upcoming xRapid launch in a few weeks. XRP has struggled this year with the ongoing bear market, losing almost 95 percent in value and currently trading at $0.27 down from a high of $3.84.
XRP developer Ripple has faced controversy this year regarding whether or not the cryptocurrency is considered a security by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). In an attempt to resolve these issues, Ripple has released XRP Ledger 1.1.0 which features changes designed to comply with regulations.
Ripple has also enlisted several major financial institutions for the beta-testing phase of its xRapid product, including major remittance providers Moneygram and Western Union. The product provides a means of completing cross-border payments much faster and more efficiently than current methods.
Ethereum has recovered slightly today and moved back up above the key resistance level of $200, now down only 7.9% in 24 hours. The dip follows a troublesome week for Ethereum that saw it drop to $170 last Wednesday and become largely unprofitable for most miners. As a result, a number of miners appeared to have switched to mining Bitcoin, pushing up its hashrate significantly. Quantitative analyst Sam Doctor tweeted last Friday that the BTC hashrate has doubled since May this year, up from 28 EH/s to 57 EH/s.
The remaining top 10 coins have also suffered through the slump, with Litecoin (LTC), Bitcoin Cash (BCH), Cardano (ADA) and Monero (XMR) each down between 6 and 7%.
